“What?” I turned to him, scanning his face.
“I brought you something.”
“Something?”
“Well, someone, really.”
My first thought was that it was my father. I turned back to the boat, my eyes searching the throngs of people for a familiar face. Would he have changed much in these last few years? Would his hair have gone grey? Were the smile lines around his eyes and mouth deeper? Did he even smile anymore, with all of his children lost and his wives dead or gone?
But I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anyone except for the familiar faces of the residents and merchants and sailors of Barepost, people who were becoming commonplace to me.
“Frida.” Harbin put a hand on my elbow and drew me forward just as two women approached us. “This is Tsarra Trisfina, high elf of Lamruil, and her companion, Savarah. Tsarra, this is Frida, youngest of the Svand siblings.”
“Hello,” I said, looking sideways at Harbin. I’d been hoping for a gift, and this . . . well, this was disappointing. I had no idea why he was introducing me to these strange women or why they’d brought a high elf into Barepost at all. If I thought I got strange looks, this Trisfina lady would have it a hundred times worse. The two of us together—well, we ought to charge people to stare.
“Frida.” Tsarra gently grasped one of my hands in both of hers. She was tall and slender and elegant, everything I always thought an elf might be. I couldn’t really tell if she was beautiful. Her features were sharp with a wide, flat brow. Her long, pointed ears were decorated with jewelry. She wore a white dress and a grey feathered cloak fastened with a golden strap across her chest. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to finally meet you.”
“You are?” I still had no idea what was going on. Harbin was no help. He stood to the side, rocking back on his heels and looking very pleased with himself.
“Oh, yes,” said Savarah, taking my hand from her friend. She was conventionally beautiful with golden curls and a wide, rosy face. She was also human.
In spite of that, when she touched me, a rush of something like anger made my head spin. I extracted my hand as delicately as possible. I had no idea what that was, but I didn’t want her to touch me again.
“Master Harbin told us all about you and your siblings.” Savarah didn’t seem bothered by or even seem to notice my unease as she sidled closer to me. “I convinced Tsarra that you would be her best hope.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself.” Tsarra scolded her friend. Then to me, “Perhaps there’s somewhere we can talk in private? I would like to discuss a job of the utmost importance and discretion.”
A job? From someone other than Luthair? It seemed too good to be true. I pulled Harbin aside. “Where did they come from?”
“We stopped at Lamruil a few days ago.” He glanced over my shoulder apologetically.
I jerked on his sleeve to bring his attention back to me.
He brought his face close to mine and dropped his voice to a whisper. “They paid a lot for passage to Barepost. They’re looking for someone in the mines from what I gather. I might have mentioned that you, Erik, and Estrid would be willing to help for the right price.”
“And what is the price?”
“I don’t think it matters. Name it and they’ll pay it. I thought this could be it for you, you know? Make enough money to buy your way home. No more sneaking onto ships at midnight or hunting down monsters for a pittance.”
I looked back at the women, turning his words over in my head. Elves didn’t typically deal with anyone outside of their race, but here was this high-born Bruish elf with a human companion asking a D’ahvol for help. If she could travel all this way and take a chance on me, maybe we could take a chance on her.
“Fine. Follow me.”
Chapter 4
When our strange parade—minus Harbin who had to stay and work—burst into the Gold Mine, I thought Gerves’s eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. Luckily, the only other customers were my siblings. They sat at our usual table, bowls of what looked to be leftover stew in front of them.
Estrid stood, her hand on the swords at her hips.
Erik grew very still, his eyes finding first Tsarra, then Savarah, and then me. “What’s this?”
I procured two chairs. “Two mugs of your finest ale,” I called to Gerves.
He rolled his eyes. There was only one ale in Barepost, and it was good enough for everyone. Still, he reached up to pull down two mugs from the rack and turned his back on us to fill them from the keg.
Savarah sat without hesitation.
Tsarra was slower to acclimate to her surroundings, looking around with distaste at the dark innards of the pub. I imagined that pubs in Lamruil were much classier, with crystal serving platters and wide windows to brighten the walls. Here, glass was far too expensive, and windows let in the dust just as easily as the sun and weren’t worth the hassle. Unless you were Stephan Luthair, who could pay people to keep his windows clean and sweep his floors.
Erik noticed Tsarra’s scowl and turned his hooded eyes on me as if he could extract an explanation from my face.
All I gave him, though, was a wan smile and a nod of my head.
Once we’d all sat, our party of five squeezed in tightly around the square table, and Gerves had brought everyone their ale, we stared at one another for a brief moment.
Estrid turned to me, wasting no time on pleasantries or introductions. “Why have you brought them here? Who are they?”
“That question is, perhaps, best directed to Mistress Trisfina?” Savarah gestured with her hand.
Estrid shifted her gaze to Tsarra. “Fine. Who are you, and why are you here?”
“My name is Tsarra Trisfina,” the elf woman answered, her voice gentle like the ringing of small bells. “I am searching for a high-born elf of Lamruil, a man called Arun Phina.”
“There are no elves here.” Estrid waved a hand in dismissal.
“There should not be, no.” Tsarra shook her head. “But I have it on good faith that Governor Luthair took Arun in an unlawful bargain and enslaved him in the mines.”
“What sort of unlawful bargain?” Erik still hadn’t dropped his guard in spite of his outward appearance of calm.
I knew that any minute, he could stand and order the women away and this chance at freedom would be squandered just as all the others had been before.
“A life bargain,” Tsarra answered. “He traded one of his imprisoned miners for Arun Phina.”
“Why would your Arun Phina make such a bargain?” Erik’s voice was tense as he waited for an answer. He was stuck in his own type of life bargain, one that Estrid and I had made for him.
Tsarra didn’t seem entirely sure how to answer. She leaned her head from one side to the other, thinking. “Our Arun will die for a cause he believes in. The creature your governor—”
“Not,” I interrupted, “our governor.”
“The creature Governor Luthair,” Tsarra corrected herself, “had imprisoned was innocent of his crimes, and when Arun found out, it became his mission to free him. No matter the cost. Even if the cost meant his life.”
“So he’s imprisoned in the mines, and you want us to?” Estrid raised her eyebrows expectantly.
“Free him. Break into the mine and free him.”
Erik barked a laugh as he shifted in his chair. Without another sound, he lifted his mug and drained it, a drop of brown liquid dampening his beard.
“Are you not the best?” Savarah smiled across the table at Erik, but it wasn’t a kind look.
“The best what, exactly?” Estrid leaned forward, her guard up.
Savarah’s gaze slid to her over her untouched mug of ale. “We’ve heard about the three of you even in Lamruil. The Svand siblings for hire. You kill the monsters and protect the people, don’t you? How is what we’re asking any different?”
“What we’re good at is surviving.” Estrid’s cheeks flushed. She was normally even-keeled, but some
thing about Savarah seemed to get a rise out of her. I put a hand on her arm, but she didn’t seem to notice. “We don’t do the things we do to protect the people. We do what we do to protect ourselves.”
“But,” I jumped in before the situation could deteriorate even further. “For the right price . . .” I trailed off, hoping Tsarra would fill in the blanks. This was going badly. All we needed was one chance. Was that too much to ask?
But Tsarra kept her eyes on her own mug, spinning it in lazy circles between her fingers.
“The price doesn’t matter.” Erik might as well have closed a book with that sentence. “The cost is too high.”
“The cost?” Tsarra looked up.
“We would go to war with Luthair, and Luthair doesn’t play fair. We would be making our own life bargains. Ours for your Arun Phina’s.”
“Not if Tsarra is able to guarantee us immediate passage out of Barepost.” I didn’t even know if that was the case, but I had to throw it out there.
“The only thing I can guarantee,” Tsarra said, “is that the high elves will go to war with Barepost to get Arun back. That seems like a high price to pay for your refusal to help.”
“It appears you’re in a bit of a rough situation.” Savarah kept her smile in place and shook her head.
“I am sorry for your Arun Phina,” Erik said, pushing himself to his feet. “But he entered into this bargain on his own. We will not be able to help you.”
“Erik—” I started. This couldn’t be the end.
“My answer is no.”
I snapped my mouth shut, embarrassed by his easy dismissal. I was tired of being ignored and closed out, when all I wanted was to save us. “And why should we listen to you?”
Erik dropped back down into his seat and watched me, an astonished expression on his face. “Because you always do.”
He was right. We did. So why was I fighting this so hard? It was like I had two voices inside of my head—my usual, fairly reasonable one and another one, unfamiliar in its anger and righteousness. I had a temper, yes, but it wasn’t typically directed at my brother.
Estrid glanced from me to Erik, and then to Savarah, who watched our exchange with barely-concealed excitement.
Tsarra, on the other hand, squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, looking anywhere but at the three of us. “We should go. It’s clear our trip here was in vain.”
“Quite so,” Savarah agreed, not taking her eyes off Erik. She dropped two coins onto the table as she stood. “For our drinks.” Then they breezed out the door.
As soon as they were gone, the tension disappeared, like a knot being unwound. Erik’s shoulders slumped forward. Estrid fell backward into her chair.
But I was still furious. “Why would you turn them down? You barely even gave them a chance.”
“Frida, I—”
“All Luthair has to do is say jump, and you ask how high, but I bring us something else—a real, valid option—and you don’t even consider it.” I was yelling.
Gerves pushed Grissall toward the back, the movement small but the message clear. This sort of dispute was dangerous and unwelcome here.
“That’s not fair,” Estrid said. “You don’t know—”
I couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t sit here and listen to them justify our situation. I stood, my own restless energy finally getting the better of me. “I know I hate this place. I know I hate Stephan Luthair, and I know he likely owes this elf his freedom. And I know I cannot spend the rest of my life here beneath his thumb.”
I barreled out the door without giving them a chance to do anything to stop me.
The street was still busy, packed with people carrying brown paper packages and shouting back and forth to one another. A group of sailors was heading to the Gold Mine so I turned away from them and walked in the opposite direction. It was then that I saw a slip of white dress disappear around the corner of the general store.
On a whim, I followed, stopping at the mouth to the alleyway, listening.
“All is not lost,” Savarah was saying. “We will find a way.”
“Without him,” Tsarra said, her voice thick with tears. She sniffed and continued, “Without our marriage . . . Oh, I cannot bear the thought of never returning home again. Of my parents and sisters being cast out of Lamruil. Where will we go? How will we survive?”
Interesting. So it seemed the mission was more personal than political. There would be no army coming down from Lamruil to attack Barepost and free the high-born elf imprisoned in the mines. It wasn’t even love for Arun Phina that had driven Tsarra down from her high rock. It was love for her family, a desire and a responsibility to keep them safe.
I came around the corner finally. Tsarra looked up at me from where she leaned against the wall of the general store, her arms crossed over her stomach as if in pain. Savarah took a step away from her, turning toward me in surprise.
“I’ll do it,” I said, “but not for free.”
“I cannot pay you.” Tsarra stepped away from the wall.
I held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t want your coins. If I do this thing, Luthair will punish me, and if he cannot punish me, then he will punish my brother and sister. No amount of money will buy our safety on Barepost. We will need to leave with you and Arun Phina, and I want you to promise us shelter in Lamruil and passage back to the Western March.”
“I don’t—”
“Done,” Savarah said, interrupting Tsarra’s objections.
“Savarah!” Tsarra whipped her head toward her friend, her voice sharper than I’d yet heard from her. “I’m in no position to make any such promises.”
“Perhaps not,” Savarah said unabashedly, looking wholly unconcerned. “But Arun Phina will be if she gets him out. And if she doesn’t—” She shrugged. “Well, we won’t owe her a thing.”
I took a few steps into the alley and reached a hand out to Tsarra.
The elf looked at it, then up at me, and finally took my hand, sealing our deal. As soon as her skin touched mine, I felt a rush of excitement I hadn’t felt in a long time, not even when I’d sliced off the blazetaur’s poisonous stinger. I would finally be going up against the real monster in Barepost—Governor Stephan Luthair. And I definitely didn’t like to lose.
Chapter 5
There was a single entrance to Barepost’s mine. It sat high above Barepost itself, carved into the side of the mountain. It was there that I found myself the next morning, watching the day’s miners plod carefully to work. The pathway up was treacherous, rocky and barely wide enough for one man. They walked single file, a rope tied to a beam at the top linking them together. There were lifts like at the wharf, but here, they were reserved for raising and lowering goods, not men. I knew that the mine housed prisoners who lived, worked, ate, and slept below ground, but a lot of men from Barepost worked there too. They were the ones who came and went every day, risking the trip to go home to their families at night.
This was the only entrance and exit. It wasn’t just a matter of finding a way in, but of sneaking back out with a prisoner. There had to be another way.
“There’s no other way.”
I jerked, toppling over in my hiding place, sending a cloud of dust into the air. I coughed and waved my hand in front of my face, then looked up to see Erik standing over me. He squatted down beside me, his form barely hidden by the thin vegetation growing wild on the hill, and squinted over at the procession creeping up the mountain.
“What?”
“I know what you’re thinking, and there’s no other way in or out of the mine.”
We hadn’t talked since I’d stormed out of the pub the day before. It was the longest we’d gone without talking, at least while both of us were conscious.
“And you’ll never get in undetected.”
I whipped my head around toward this new voice.
Estrid was on my other side, ducking low into the grass. The three of us blended into the landscape with our brown leather armor and fu
r cloaks and hair the color of straw. We were far enough away that if one of the workers were to look over this way, they’d see nothing out of place.
“It’s part of why I couldn’t take this job,” Erik said. “But I assume you did?”
“I did.” I tried to sound confident. “Someone has to get us off this island.”
“This isn’t the way.”
“Arun Phina will give us transport to Lamruil, and then Tsarra Trisfina will guarantee us safe passage back to the Western March.”
“You made a deal with an absent man?” Estrid scoffed. “You’d risk our lives on the off chance that this elf will feel some sort of gratitude when we free him from a situation he willingly walked into? Have you ever known a Bruish elf to worry about anyone other than themselves?”
“Tsarra said he is a man of his word and with the means to back it up.”
“Tsarra Trisfina will say anything to get her way.” Estrid sneered at me. It was a look she typically reserved for outsiders. For people she deemed daft or unworthy. The fact that it was aimed at me made something inside of me shrink.
I’d felt it at times through the years, the differences between us. We all got our looks from our father, so that made it easier to fit in with them, but there was always a bond between them that I never did quite share. It showed up in small moments throughout our childhood, when they would gang up on me or stand side by side and squeeze me out without even thinking about it. I’d spent my whole life scrambling to keep up and to fit in, and I was tired of it. I was going to do this job and prove them wrong. I was a Svand, just like the two of them.
I turned to Erik, ignoring my sister. “You’ve been in there, right?” Luthair had sent Erik and a small squadron into the mines to extract a gloomling.
“All the more reason not to return.”
“You must know your way around, though. If I can get in, can you tell me where to find the prisoners?”
“Whether or not I can doesn’t matter.” Erik shook his head, his eyes on the mine entrance. “You’re not going in.”
Being the Suun Page 3
